Are you a boy?
Published August 25th, 2006 in Anima animus, Mostly a picture.
Our dear friends with the skirt-wearing, evening-glove bedecked, female pronoun-using son are staying over this week, before they return home to Israel, whence they came eight years ago for grad school. Though none of us in the household (counting seven of us, in our extended state) is a gender-bending boy, I at least am some kind of a gender bending girl, which Amit picked up on at dinner the other night.
“Are you a boy?” he asked me, out of the blue.
“Good question!” I said, thrilled that I might keep him company, if for a moment, along his brave journey deep into the nether space between the sex of the body and the gender of the spirit. “I’m a little bit of both.”
For a second I thought that might be confusing, or ambiguous. Which of course it can be. But seemingly mostly if you’re a grown-up.
“On the inside, you’re a boy,” he flatly declared.
“Yep, pretty much,” I smiled back.
He concluded, “In your heart you’re a boy, but on your chest, you’re a girl.”
My sweetie and I met eyes with his mother, and we all noted wordlessly to one another his stupefying eloquence. All I could reply was, “I couldn’t have put it better myself.”
Then back he went to his pasta.
Lesbian Dad is written by a parent who answers to the name "Baba" and works toward a world in which amor does indeed vincit omnia. 
I loved a boy like that once. I was working in daycare and he was with us from the time he was 2 till he was 5. He used to say that he had wanted to be born a girl, but God made him be a boy. He was just so sweet and matter of fact about it, but it broke my heart everytime I heard him say that. I’m sure it came from his parents trying to explain to him why he wasn’t a girl… but that’s harsh. I mean, a genetic mistake you can fix, you know? But God? That’s so hard to go against.
It sounds like Amit has wonderful parents. Good for him.
Thanks, Trista. Yep: he definitely does. And for the time being, his younger brother will wear nothing but what Amit wears. A fellow traveller on the haberdashery part of this journey, for sure, in these years. They’re a wonderful family all, and a lot of us will miss them dearly when they go.
Addendum, Sept 6: This great article from the San Francisco Chronicle came out just a few days after I posted the image & accompanying above: “When is it OK for boys to be girls, and girls to be boys?”